Many magazines can be very stingy with the amount of print material that they also put online, and I understand that; they want people to spend money to buy the magazine.

The good news is that the folks at Budget Travel magazine have generously put a great deal of this month's (May 2007) special insert online. Behold, the "Family Travel Handbook 2007" has all sorts of goodies:

1) 15 Before 15 -- surprising places to travel with kids before they turn 15.

2) … Read More

Since we already know that spring break vacations have either already happened or passed us by, here are a few ideas for the next golden days of free time that are on the horizon....

Thinking about being a driver who shunpikes? That's "shunning the turnpikes" and sticking to the backroads in your travel planning; check out my recent post Road Trip! on the Edmunds.com blog The Driving Woman (and hang around for awhile… Read More

When we lived in the Netherlands, we found that organized walking and hiking are a big deal.

Germans, and most Europeans, call it volksmarching (literally "people's march") and there are organized walks across the Continent practically every weekend of the year. People collect commemorative pins and mugs and doo-dads from the marches, enjoy good company and fresh air, and generally make me wonder why in the world we don't have more of this in the US (although I was pleased to find… Read More

Nobody does flowers like the Dutch.

If you're ever in the Netherlands, particularly in the springtime, take the kids to see the Keukenhof gardens, just outside Amsterdam in the town of Lisse (a lovely area, with lots of things to do.) Even if your family is not normally botanically inclined (mine sure aren't) the acres of beautifully-groomed, colorful flowers are a real crowd-pleaser. "Keukenhof" basically means "kitchen garden" in Dutch; originally, herbs were grown here for the… Read More

Spring and fall are prime time for Renaissance/medieval fairs around the world, perhaps because the heavy, stifling costumes and jousting armor need to be worn in temperate weather by those Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) reenactor enthusiasts.

To get medieval in Belgium, visit the beautifully preserved medieval city of Bruges; take a look at the article " The perfect break: Bruges" in the UK's Telegraph newspaper. We visited there as a family and had a lovely time walking… Read More

Today I thought I'd give you a run-down on what the heck a full-time freelance writer and blogger does all day long. I love my work, but there are moments of fog-inducing bleariness as I try to sort out my hourly priorities.

There are the family travel topics, of course, both here and on my personal blog Family Travel, hosted on the Australia-based travel site BootsnAll. My recent entries include Learning Cantonese in Hong Kong and… Read More